ScriptKitt3h

So am I to understand that this is 'prop' planes only, or would something like a STOL-optimized fighter be allowed? I ask since I've got several using Panthers (1-2 engines per) that I'd pull out provided you're not just limiting it to props.

I recently saw a post by @goduranus showcasing their way of replicating the (admittedly overpowered) fictional fusion rocket engine from the sci-fi series The Expanse, the "Epstein Drive". This propulsion system, invented in the series' backstory by a Martian drive engineer named Solomon Epstein is a unique way to tackle the "torch ship" concept- a very high TWR fusion rocket engine with near-fantastical levels of delta-V and fuel efficiency allowing for long 1G or higher thrust burns, created as a stroke of dumb (and ultimately fatal) luck by a man tinkering with his personal spacecraft. Now, with the capability to make Epstein Drive-propelled craft in KSP, I figured I'd tackle a replica of Mr. Epstein's infamous ship, his personal space yacht. As the Sun rises over Duna, Solomon Kerman preps his ship for launch on the first test of his newly modified drive system... ...Little does he know that he's about to make history. The ship utilizes a unique propulsion system, which features a group of spider engines (altered in the .craft file's values to have negative thrust % and thus mimic the high fuel efficiency and dV aspect of the Epstein Drive) and a single Vector (which mimics the high TWR and blue engine exhaust plume of the drive). This means that while you can indeed load it up in a vanilla, pure-stock game with no troubles, it is indeed "modded" in the context of having a tweaked craft file. However, this is only to accomplish the feat of replicating the insanely powerful features of the drive system without being forced to download or develop a custom part or part pack in order to do this. ^the speck in the background is Duna falling away! Internally, there's space for up to 4 Kerbals, which can be transferred to other vessels via a docking port on the underside of the bow- docking is possible thanks to multiple RCS blocks across the ship's structure. For reference, here is an image of this very same ship in the TV show, from Season 2: Controls: The ship stages to activate the engine, and you can press 4 to extend the radial antenna array (the larger one on the front section is manually raised). Light on/off toggling will not shut off the blue glow in the drive cone area. DOWNLOAD HERE! Hopefully other fans of the show and books will enjoy this ship as much as I have while making and testing it. If I can find the time and motivation, perhaps I'll use the same setup to make a Rocinante replica fitted with BDArmory vulcan turrets as PDCs...

Made a Rockwell XFV-12 replica today, only to realize someone else already had a little while ago. D'oh. Looks good though, and flies alright, albeit a bit jankily due to the strange wingform and overall layout.

Alright, so I just saw your response, @MiffedStarfish- but in the time it took for me to see it, I already made one :v It works, but isn't nearly as good as what Rockwell intended due to various reasons. Does VTOL takeoff/land though, and can get *close* to the Mach wall, but not cross it. Here's a download link anyways just to share. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o2qxc2spmmwynzb/Rockwell XFV-12.craft?dl=0 Also, if the XFV-12's not available/has been done already, what might be an aircraft I could attempt to make and submit?

So, I looked at your spreadsheet and the Rockwell XFV-12 appears to not have been built- provided I can get one made soon, could I participate by doing that X-plane? Shouldn't take me too long, as I make a lot of fighters in my KSP playtime.

So, after seeing @goduranus's well-crafted Epstein Drive demonstrator craft on the forums last night, I decided to attempt at making Solomon Epstein's space yacht from The Expanse (more specifically, the novella Drive and its portrayal via flashback in Season 2 of the show). The show's portrayal, for reference: Going to hopefully have it up later today or tomorrow when I can do some final tests- but so far, it works like a dream.* *G-force-induced paralysis and death not covered under warranty. Ask your doctor before solo testing any advanced propulsion systems in a retrofitted ship.

OOH, neat! I'm glad someone finally found a nice way to do Epstein Drives outside of doing a proper mod with custom models and all. Might go on in and take a look at it for applications to my own ships... EDIT: OHHHH YES, this is precisely what I was hoping for. You mind if I adapt this design into a replica of the Epstein Yacht itself, @goduranus? I've been tinkering with Expanse replica ships, but up 'till now have never had the proper propulsion.

Got a lot of potential new releases coming soon, from further fighter designs... to UCAVs... to SSTOs.

Additionally, once I tune it a bit more... I'm getting close to having an ITS-based colonial transportation system ready for release soonTM. (Still need to tune the boostback flight plan for the booster, and build the tanker, a surface hab with ISRU, and a cargo-dedicated variant of the ship.) In the meantime, I'm still working on that RAPIER/Panther hybrid fighter and some other stuff (including my well-known stock space warship fleet), as well as a potential attempt to replicate (loosely) the Arsenal Bird UCAV carrier plane that all those AC7 trailers keep showing off...

Made some minor modifications to that WIP I posted the other day and got this slightly more high tech-looking (and even faster) variant: Nyooom! HOT Comes close to SSTO-ing on brute force alone, but will need more proper flight path tuning and possibly more oxidizer in the mix to really make it to orbit- for now, it's a very fast and quite fun atmospheric fighter. I even considered putting an ejection seat in the service bay 'cockpit' but as is it works quite well with minimal heating reaching into the pilot's area.

Made this on a concept art-induced whim today, might be able to SSTO with it once I fly it some more. Shame Scatterer's borked right now, it's so strange flying over Kerbin w/out it.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-TURBINE Pretty neat, love how slick it is overall.

Given that the submissions thread has received several new entries I'll be taking a look at them ASAP and sending them on to @HatBat for further review should they pass muster. I've been struggling with a persistent terrain-breakage issue in 1.3 currently, hence why I've not been able to get on that sooner.

Hyperedit's not really that necessary for putting stuff in orbit anymore (provided it can't be launched via strap-on boosters), since there's the teleport to orbit function in the ALT-F12 menu now. Scatterer is worth waiting for though, at least in my opinion.

Yes! Finally, a proper Expanse ship on the Exchange (nice Belter Creole, BTW- though I'm partial to Dusters myself). Quite tempted to try my hand at the Rocinante now myself...

@Joseph Kerman, you do realize this thread dates back to summer of last year, yes? KSP's changed significantly since then and most, if not all, of my ships from back then are outdated. Now, if others consider that ship strong in terms of armor, I appreciate the compliment(s). But I never alleged that any ship is 'invulnerable'- nothing is, given how some aspects of KSP's parts list (like fairings...) and physics simulation can be abused to break things.

Yeah agreed. I definitely feel like I'm starting to regain my old sense of fuel/propulsion/armament balancing now though, especially now that I've begun to re-modernize my active arsenal of stock munition designs I keep mounted on my ships.

I'm not referring to the armor layering, but to the shaping of the hull. Depending on how you shape your ship, different levels of stress and impact resistance will be present. @MiffedStarfish has managed to make a ship that handles hard hits and impacts from projectiles designed to defeat armored hulls very well, while maintaining good aesthetics. Not everyone can achieve that (I myself have only made so many vessels that are truly difficult to severely damage, and normally not without bloating part count unnecessarily) while keeping the ship very functional, and the Hyperion nails that.

Got even more new ships... Ion fighter inspired by @Spartwo's ion-engine recon ship; has ok-ish burn times, but recharges very quickly off of 2 fuel cells and a solar array in addition to RTGs. Carries weapons on 4 0.625m hardpoints. Another new warship based on the old Helios hull styling, and designed as an all-encompassing tech demonstrator equipped with 3 individual weapon systems- 1 I-beam pod, 1 1.25m AKITA missile, and 4 small compact, prototype guided anti-fighter missiles meant to provide a reasonable of level of protection from carrier-launched fighters and lightly-armored vessels.

Went and took the Hyperion out for a spin earlier today- that's one well-made ship. It's got good looks and functionality, and despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to outright destroy it easily using some of my average military ship loadouts, so props to you for good armor and hull layout.

Additionally, a proper tournament would be fun, maintain the traditional battle format, and using a bracket system would allow rounds to be done when time permits.

Agreed. As a longtime battler, I've seen several attempts at having more than 2 players in one engagement, and most (if not all) haven't gone well just due to logistics and timing. It's partially due to the nature of the beast- turn-based takes more time to setup and complete than real-time combat (something we don't have currently), and as a forum game it's slowed down by the process of 'download persist -> take turn -> upload persist and screenshots -> make post with pics and persist DL link -> rinse/repeat'. Don't get me wrong, the system works and when it works well, it's a blast (pun intended). It's just not fast, and for more than 2 players in a battle that really starts to show.

From what I understand, a good balance of aesthetics, functionality, and not being so complex per ship that the game turns into a lagfest while he's recording. Additionally, you don't necessarily need to make most of your vessels (this goes for everyone in here) arsenal ships carrying massive munition loads, but just enough to be effective. For example, most of my ships have 1 or more 1.25m guided missiles (but not much more than 3-5 normally), and perhaps some small i-beams or small guided anti-fighter weapons. Since I know my weapon designs can semi-reliably deal major damage on a direct hit to most ships out there, I tend to try and keep loadouts lean to reduce part count, which also gives me more room for armor, internals, and aesthetic areas of the outer hull, as less weapons = less space needed to store them internally. It also doesn't hurt to pay attention to your ships' range(s), as (minus a few instances with warp drives being used to advance the plot rapidly), most of the interplanetary travel in the series is done with actual burns, meaning a ship does need to be able to travel a decent bit without using up all of its fuel rapidly.

Got new ships to field in my pipeline, some more ready to fight than others... My new vector-powered missiles ('AKITA', standing for Adv. Kinetic Impact Torpedo type A) pack a punch too, and with lower complexity per round parts wise than my old ASMs.

@MiffedStarfish, that's a beautiful turret. Hopefully it works when the main release gets multi-vessel AGs; I'd love to make some point defense gun-style setups on vessels. That being said, I've been taking a look at some of the older ships I helped make for the series recently, one of them being the Helios. It's still a great ship aesthetically and flies well, but looking back at it and comparing it to more recent builds got me thinking... ^Carries up to 2 stacks of 1.25m, and has twin i-beam guns for line-of-sight shooting in addition to decoy probes. Crews 4. I'm calling this prototype the Osiris for now. If @HatBat is interested, I'd be happy to work on getting it series-ready. If not, I've no problem with continuing to service the Helios, as the ship is indeed still functional, but a bit dated design-wise now due to the insane rate of tech dev in KSP currently.